“The Raker is outgassing, even here in the airlock,” one of them reported, consulting his paw-held sensor.
“Atmosphere?”
“Standard, but a lot of hydrogen mixed in. They must have fuel leaks throughout the ship.”
A leak which Thrarm-Captain didn’t want entering his own ship any longer than necessary. Hydrogen’s flammability was the least of his worries: its monoatomic ability to undermine solids—metals, synthetics, composites—by simply passing through them led to a condition called brittlization. After enough exposure, gaskets disintegrated, steel sheeting crumbled like desiccated plastic. “Move quickly, then. What about their inner airlock door?”
“Battle damage, but I can hear someone pounding behind it.”
“How bad is the damage?”
“Bad enough, Thrarm-Captain.”
“That answer is no answer, Corporal. Tell me what needs to be done to open the door and how long it will take.”
“Beam-torch: three minutes, maybe four.”
“Then do it, and quickly.”
“At the run, Thrarm-Captain.”
Within seconds, the sparking glow of a beam-torch flickered inside the airlock. Satisfied, Thrarm-Captain caught the squad leader’s eye and made a grasping “to-me” hand gesture. The kzin noncom came immediately.
Thrarm-Captain leaned their space helmets together. He muted his radio feed and said, “This concerns me, squad leader.”
“The amount of time this is taking, or the possibility of treachery?”
“Both. I want you to summon two more squads to this area, but do not deploy them around the airlock. Keep them back, in staggered positions, protecting all junctures, all the way back to the main passageway and command bulkheads.”
“Yes, Thrarm-Captain.” And then the troop leader was gone, already summoning in the squads and preparing a defensive network with multiple fallback positions.
Thrarm-Captain toggled his radio open again. “zh-Sensor: report.”
“We are now twenty-four light-seconds behind the van. This puts us abreast of the leading elements of the rearguard, now.”
“Yes. And the Raker?”
“Sir, no activity at all, except that its power output continues to diminish steadily.”
“The human ships?”
“The ones which attacked the Raker fell back and have merged into the front rank of the leaf-eating harriers that are pushing us before them. But nothing else: no sign of heavier human hulls inbound.”
“Very well. Inform me at once of any changes.”
“Yes, Thrarm-Captain. I will—”
That was when, with a shrill screech of high-pressure atmosphere, the beam-torch team cut through the Raker’s inner airlock door: a brief wash of low-pressure flame flared up as it did. The operator quickly switched off the torch.
“What the Patriarch’s entrails just happened?” demanded Thrarm-Captain, instinctively moving closer to the source of the surprise.
“Thrarm-Captain, the atmosphere on the other side of the door is under tremendous pressure.” The high-pitched keening of the in-pouring gases almost made his report inaudible.
At that moment, a toxicity alarm started yowling and the specialist with the wrist comp looked up sharply. “Thrarm-Captain, the gas from the Raker: it’s pure hydrogen. Coming in at a rate of—”
But Thrarm-Captain wasn’t listening: he no longer needed to. He was too busy damning his own gullibility and rapping out orders: “Torch team, immediate return to our hull. Seal our hatches behind you. Bridge, jettison the emergency docking ring—”
The world seemed to tear itself apart around him. Before the torch team could exit the Raker’s shattered airlock, its inner door was blasted off its hinges with terrible force, killing two of the team outright, disabling a third.
Following that blast so quickly that it seemed to be part of the same event, flame came gushing into the companionways of Guardant Ancestor. The first roaring rush of white fire was the hydrogen combusting, knocking the kzinti down or spilling them sideways against walls and bulkheads. But hard on its heels came a thicker yellow-orange conflagration: clearly, a pressurized fuel-air explosive gas was being pumped in at immense pressure, right behind the hydrogen. The unit patches on the kzinti’s spacesuits began to burn. The battery of the beam-torch cooked off, detonating with a blue-white flash and a double-toned thunder-clap.
zh-Sensor’s voice was screaming reports as Thrarm-Captain picked himself up off the deck. “Launches from the Raker. More lifepods—no, not lifepods. Can’t be: they are maneuvering, moving straight toward our hull—”
Of course. The leaf-eaters are going to cut their way into my ship: why use an existing door when you can make your own? “zh-Sensor, engage the pods with all weapons; they are breaching craft.”
“Trying, Thrarm-Captain. They are too close; our weapons will not bear.”
That’s when the shooting started. The screaming buzz of a human heavy-coil gun was audible through Thrarm-Captain’s supposedly sound-proof faceplate, along with images of hellish carnage. The squad leader, who had been racing around the corner toward the airlock, caught a full flight of the electromagnetically propelled four-millimeter, tungsten-cored, steel needles. One moment he was there; the next, a vaguely bipedal mist of plasma and body parts was falling backward, a diffusing red smear. Following close behind him, a newly arrived junior squad leader was blown aside by just two of the projectiles, each one opening up a red crater on the left side of his torso.
Thrarm-Captain had his own handgun up as a reflective object rolled swiftly past the tee-intersection where the two kzinti had been riddled. Thrarm-Captain sent three fast rounds after it, may have hit the device, which, he now discerned, resembled a large metal ball propelled by four roller-rings on interpenetrated axes.
The full implications of what Thrarm-Captain was witnessing sunk in. The leaf-eaters were on his ship, with specialized combat ’bots. Somehow they knew what he was carrying, why his ship was built for defense not offense. It was impossible to conceive of how they had learned it, but they had, and their intent was now clear: they did not want to destroy his ship; they wanted to take it.
Unthinkable.
Thrarm-Captain had his mouth open to order his bridge crew to override all local controls and autoseal all bulkhead doors when there was a muffled blast from aft; the lights flickered and the faintly crackling carrier-tone of the command-channel died away. It came back after a moment, along with approximately half of the lights.
zh-Sensor’s words were tinny in the helmet’s compromised speakers: “Thrarm-Captain, power in Engineering is out. Apparently the humans have already sent some automated EMP bombs on ahead to—”
There was a dull explosion from the direction the robot-ball had gone—and zh-Sensor’s words died along with the rest of the lights. Leaf-eating spoor-spawn humans: they didn’t even have the courage to board themselves and—
Thrarm-Captain, changing his handgun’s now-malfunctioning power-pack, heard and then saw the approach of a new human robot: a floating oblong that bristled with weapons, one of which was clearly the hopper-fed coil-gun that had already killed two of his Heroes.
Screaming rage, seeing the spittle spray in a fine mist against the inner surface of his helmet’s face-plate, Thrarm-Captain seated the power pack, and brought up his weapon.
Which operated slightly longer than he did: the grav-chassised robot fired a stream of needles into the big kzin’s center of mass. Dead instantaneously, Thrarm-Captain’s finger remained frozen around the trigger: the gun fired a few rounds of futile defiance before falling to the deck in imitation of its wielder.
The autocutter—an expensive, purpose-built, one-use device derived from reverse-engineered kzin weapon technology—finished slicing into the hull of the kzin auxiliary cruiser that Lieutenant Commander Dieter Armbrust had determined was his op team’s target.
“Holding at two meters standoff,” announced the boarding pod’s steersma
n.
“Deploy charge; detonate at will,” responded Dieter.
The gravitically tamped charge—which cost a small fortune—spat out of the boarding-pod’s nose. It sunk snugly into a small depression that had been burned into the hull. It was ringed by a three-centimeter-deep groove that the autocutter had sliced fifteen seconds earlier.
“Three seconds.” Dieter checked his gear: mostly non-lethals. However, for entry, he was carrying a retrofitted kzin beamer: a carbine and, therefore, right-sized for him.
“Fire in the hole,” warned the gunnery sergeant in charge of the heavy weapons.
One sharp jar, and then the steersman was moving the pod in quickly, making his confirmations as he went: “Charge was successful: One-point-five-meter breaching hole established.” A soft bump as the pod kissed the holed hull: “Pressure gasket is deployed and holding; we have hard dock.”
The gunnery sergeant pressed a few virtual buttons on the heavy weapons control console. “Deploying proximity security packages.” Almost inaudible through the layers that were still between the boarding team and the interior of the kzin ship, there was a long ripping sound like an oversized popcorn popper in overdrive. “Cluster munitions have cleared ingress point. Releasing hunter-killer ROVs.”
Dieter nodded, turned to the six men in Alpha Team. “It’s easy to forget your training because of the excitement.” Or fear. But I can’t use that word, not here, not now. “So, one more time by the numbers. We enter in twos, we fan out, using the maps that are being uploaded by the ROVs to our helmet processors right now. Once we have located the target, we move toward it directly, leapfrog advance. A pair of ROVs will cover our six. Watch for friendlies; all teams are converging on the same point. Lethal systems are ‘weapons free’ until we reach and confirm the target. Then, only designated sharpshooters remain ‘weapons free’ with lethals: all the rest of us shift over to non-lethal systems. As soon as I signal ‘objective achieved,’ we reverse our path and fall back upon our pods. Watch for ambushes on the way out.” Dieter checked his watch. “Any questions?” Heads rotated tightly from side to side. “Gunny, are the ROVs done?”
“Almost, skipper. Ran into a few big bucks in terminal defensive positions. They took out one of my ’bots. Damn, but the ratcats have good night vision, even unaided. But that’s the last of them. I think I’m seeing the objective ahead. I’m labeling its location as Zone Cougar on your maps.”
Dieter glanced at the forehead HUD in his helmet. “Got it. And they’ve lost power in there?”
“Sure looks like it. Seems like this ship doesn’t have any more defense against internal EMP weapons than the other kzin battlewagons.”
Although I’ll bet today’s escapade might change that. Dieter nodded to his team. “Ready, team. Steersman, we go on ‘three.’ Cycle the valve in one, two, THREE—”
The iris valve at the front of the boarding pod contracted out of the way with a shuddering hiss—and they were in tiger-country. Dieter revised that assessment after a quick look through his thermal imaging goggles: they were in dead tiger country. To an unpracticed eye, it would have appeared to be the aftermath of a fevered abattoir nightmare, but knowing the sequence in which the hull had been breached and entered, Dieter had a precise forensic understanding of what he was seeing.
The lowest layer of kzin corpses, barely visible under the others, had been the first to die: they were both blasted and pulped. These were the ratcats who had been tasked with intercepting whatever came out of the human pod that had been sighted boring through this part of their hull. God knows what they expected to achieve beyond suicide. The gravitically tamped breaching charge had blasted in against them with the force of a 250-kilo bomb, then there had been explosive decompression tugging them right back out an instant later, until the pod made its hard-dock. There wasn’t much left of that first kzin welcoming committee.
The second scattering of corpses was piled atop the first. These were more conventionally riddled and dismembered: the late responders, or maybe simply those with enough self-control to hang back around a corner until all the carnage of the initial boarding was over. They had, however, come face to face with the first packages to emerge from the small payload bay at the front of the pod: small, self-propelled cluster-bomblet robots, most of which, like bees, had destroyed themselves in making their attack.
The third, less numerous and more scattered, group of corpses, were those that had run into the gunnery sergeant’s remote-operated attack drones. More responsive than simple robots, these partially autonomous systems had gunned down any remaining defenders, and were now watching Dieter’s flank and rear.
He glanced up to check his HUD’s objective locator guidon and aimed his hand aft. “This way. Follow me.”
Despite all the precautions and the support robots and ROVs, Alpha Team still had some problems. About halfway to their goal, they had a short, sharp meeting engagement with a trio of kzinti who had evidently been moving aft to protect the objective area. It had been a point-blank firefight, the muzzles of the contending beamers and coil guns almost touching as they discharged. The humans got off the first shot, accomplishing that only because the point-man’s thermal-imaging goggles showed a split-second haze of approaching body heat before the lead kzin came around the corner. The savage fight lasted four seconds, and Dieter’s one casualty wasn’t even inflicted by weapon fire: it was a melee kill. The unfortunate trooper’s coil rifle had taken off the gun hand of a kzin only two meters away. It had also punched a hole, big enough to see daylight through, through his right lung. But without breaking its stride, the kzin closed and scooped out the trooper’s Adam’s apple with one sweep of his remaining, claw-sprouting hand. Then the rest of Alpha Team reduced him to a riddled and seared mélange of orange fur and red blood.
Just before reaching their objective, Alpha had another gunfight, which lasted longer due to the team’s intentionally decreased firepower. Rather than take any chances, Dieter had already ordered that two of his remaining five men go over to non-lethals. It simply didn’t make any sense to get so close to the objective, only to destroy it themselves.
But the kzinti facing them—either because their communication was down, or because they were still trying to adapt to the rapidly changing scenario—did not anticipate that there would be a whole new contingent of human boarders converging on the objective. So when the six commandos of Gamma Team arrived, unbloodied and alert, they made quick work of the remaining kzinti defenders.
Dieter now cautiously scanned the wide, high-ceilinged objective area: it looked vaguely like a gymnasium. “Report.”
The response “Clear” came from the four point men moving gingerly among structures that looked like a cross between jungle-gyms and torture devices.
Dieter toggled his open channel. “All teams, Alpha and Gamma are at the objective. Beta Team, continue toward rendezvous. All other teams, converge into defensive positions ringing objective, as per op order ‘Sierra.’” Dieter used his chin to choose his own team’s tactical channel, and discovered that there was already too much chatter on it. “Pipe down. Sergeant Aquino?”
“Yes, sir?”
“On me. Let’s see what we’ll be dealing with.”
As it turned out, there wasn’t much to deal with at all. They easily found the door leading into the terminal objective: it was completely unlike the efficient naval architecture and fittings that surrounded it. The doorway was an irregular frame of crude, hand-beaten brass, distressed to impart the impression of great age. It was what Dieter would have expected at the threshold of a dragon’s lair. Which, on reflection, pretty much defined the room his team was about to enter.
Naturally, it was locked and he had no doubt that the mechanism was sturdy. But not sturdy enough to shrug off his gravitically tamped charges. His demo specialist was almost done with setting the four-point package when Aquino, whose ears probably rivaled those of their kzinti opponents, held up a hand. “Wait. I hear something.” r />
“What?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at the brazen-bound portal. “Almost like—rabbits screaming.”
Dieter felt the hair on the back of his neck stand suddenly erect as a chill washed through him. “Finish and blow the package.”
“But sir—”
“Do it. NOW!” Dieter scrambled back. “Fire in the hole!”
Three seconds later, as the demo specialist dove past him, the charge went off with a shuddering roar, followed by a metallic clangor as the brutally twisted doorframe went cart-wheeling away.
And in the wake of that sound arose mewling cries of confused, mortal terror—counterpointed by what sounded like a ragged chorus of snarling sobs.
Dieter leaped up and toward the deformed, blackened doorway. “On me, all numbers!”
Aquino and one of his troopers were through the door before Dieter, but they lagged to a halt as they crossed the threshold, not understanding what they were seeing at first. But Dieter had anticipated this, had argued with the command staff to have it included in the training materials, had worried about it from the moment he had been given the clearance to see Dr. Yang’s full report. So he was the first to act.
He brought up his needler and dumped half a clip of its tranq-gelatin wedges into the closest kzin female, who was about to tear off the head of her own kit. She swayed, but the drug didn’t take effect fast enough. Her raking claws were off the mark, but still lethal—just not clean and swift. The small kit, no more than four weeks old, dropped to the deck, shriek-mewling, one of his lungs and much of his intestines spilling out.
Damn it: they’re too strong to succumb to the drugs immediately. Now if they’d given me the high-octane non-lethals I’d asked for—but that was all spilt milk. And Dieter had no time to cry over it. “Switch back to lethals. Two-tap the females—all of them.” He dropped his needler and snatched up his coil gun, already tracking across the loose throng of kzinretti and putting two rounds in each one that danced through his sights.